Test your skill........

[Maggi Young]

Right, this will sort the men from the boys, the girls from the women and the cart from the horse.... or somesuch.....

In this attractive receptacle, are twenty-eight different snowdrops.
 So, who can tell us which varieties these might be ?

[Martin Baxendale]

Maggi, do you never sleep? Okay, here goes...

[Martin Baxendale]

Sorry, Maggi, I can't see most of them clearly enough to even start guessing what they are. All I can spot are (I think) Bertram Anderson, Magnet, A Greatorex double (maybe Dionysus or Ophelia), nivalis flore-pleno, John Gray, Galatea, S. Arnott, and the big tall one in the middle looks like Washfield Colesbourne but could be a completely different elwesii or elwesii x plicatus. Best I can do after a long evening getting book samples ready to send off to overseas clients and UK book store chains. Stuffing envelopes is sooooo boring! And needs so much wine to keep my envelope-licking tongue wet (nah, they're all pre-glued envelopes - that was just an excuse. Hic! Now I've got the munchies. Where's the choccie biccies?)

[Paul T]

Impossible to identify all of them from one angle like that.  If anyone CAN do it then they either owned them, or else had a good look at them in person and wrote down the names!! 

And Maggi.... for someone who was busy you've obviously got too much time on your hands!! 

[Maggi Young]

So few, Martin? Tsk Tsk! Must do better...

Funny how quickly we get used to conveniences such as pre-gummed sticky things, isn't it? I was writing a card to Peg Crosland earlier this evening ( Peg is a Grande Dame of SRGC...{ but no diva... a sweeter person you couldn't hope to meet}... her late husband was the famous grower and exhibitor, Jack Crosland, a man for whom pleiones, cypripedium and a zillion other tricky plants, grew like the proverbial weeds)and discovered I had forgotten how ghastly some envelope glue can be.... YUCK!
Dear Peg is in hospital, having fallen and broken a hip and her wrist... very nasty fall and she is still thinking first about others and not herself..... her first question to a friend on his arrival to visit her in hospital... the same day as her fall.... was how did the (SRGC) meeting go on Tuesday? What a woman, Jack was lucky to have her as a wife and we are all aware that we are blessed to have her as a friend.
I am sure her many friends in the alpine world will wish her well.

Ghastly glue nearlyput me off my supper....but not quite....I went out for supper with my dear chum, Pumpkin, known to many of you as Wee Helen.... we went to a super seafood  restaurant and scoffed yummy scallops, tasty sea breamm and all sorts of other fishy delights......See, I do get out sometimes.....
Yo'dthink after that I would be content, but it seems that a  late walk with Lily and some time spent fiddling away here with Forum moves etc. builds up a new appetite and so, as I was reading Martin's post about getting the munchies... I was having a late snack ! Is there any wonder I'm built like two ton tessie? NO!

[ranunculus]

Third from the left is a Galanthus.....

[ranunculus]

Seventh from the right is NOT a Crocus.....

[ichristie]

Dear Maggie, I am so glad that you have now got this madness for snowdrops, I suppose that we are all touched with this and maybe it is what keeps us sane???.  Please pass on my very best wishes to Peg a grand dame indeed who always asks how everyone else is, give her a hug from me, cheers Ian the Christie kind.

[mark smyth]

I see John Gray, nivalis fl pl and either Warei or Viridapice - just now cant remember which of the latter two have the biggest spathe.

When Advising people who email me about what to buy I tell them dont buy single marked snowdrops. Buy distinctive flowers that you can recognise without a label

[ichristie]

Hi all test your skill with this find made last year and I kept quiet about it to see if it would come up again this year which it now has far to wet to take a picture so here it is?? cheers Ian the Christie kind

[Martin Baxendale]

That's lovely, Ian. Six outers and no inners? Amazing!

[Martin Baxendale]

I didn't spot a green-tipped one in the vase last night, Mark, but you're right - I can see viridapice hiding behind the stem of the double in the middle. How'd I miss it? (don't say the wine, Maggi - probably true!)

Most of those single-marked ones could be just about anything. You have a point about not recommending all the many different (or rather not so different) single-mark snowdrops, Mark, but surely there are some classic single-marks that everyone should have, like Arnott.

[Martin Baxendale]

Okay Maggi, I'll try to do better - I think I now also see (in the light of day and without the benefit of the wine) Lady Beatrix Stanley, Jaquenetta, and possibly Three Ships (though it must have been a late flower to have been out with all those others, so it probably isn't).

Now I'm going to stop staring at the damn picture. No more! I've got work to do. 

[Alan_b]

Ian, that's a beautiful snowdrop you have there.  I see some traces of green, I think.  Would that be on the inside of three of the petals?  If so then it is a very good poculiform snowdrop where the inner petals have taken on most of the characteristics of the outer petals - to the point where they are barely distinguishable.

[Martin Baxendale]

Ian, it doesn't seem quite the right petal shape for a poculiform nivalis (very rounded and incurved). Is it perhaps a poc. plicatus? Or even a poc. nivalis x plicatus hybrid?